“All right,” Fred said. “But feel free to change your mind.” He stood up. “Will, great job tonight. We’ll talk next week. And Sara, pleasure to meet you.” He slung an arm around his girlfriend. “Okay, it’s bedtime.” He slapped his thigh, and Garfunkel, tail wagging, followed them into their bedroom.
My sobriety was in question; my wish to prolong the evening was not. I went over to the stereo and made the music quieter, which had the effect of releasing the sounds from outside: a police siren wailing, then fading in a Doppler decrescendo. A horn. Another. I sat beside Sara again, and we got to talking about her writing—the sort of things she wrote about, and why. The authors she loved (Woolf, Márquez, and, of course, Mahoney) and those she didn’t (Hemingway, London, “all those tough-guy macho assholes”). She spoke of her multiple drafts, all the rewriting, and I came to see my own na?veté about how literature got made. It seemed natural to me that mastering a musical instrument would take years of practice, yet I had never really questioned my assumption that writers were more or less born with their talents fully formed.
“Sometimes I’ll read the stories I wrote a year or two ago,” she said. “I thought they were good at the time, but … yikes.”
I began to sense that when I’d seen Sara earlier in the afternoon, she already understood that her teacher knew best. That was why she’d been so upset—not because she’d been told she had no talent, but because her own suspicions about all the work that still lay ahead had been confirmed.
She wasn’t upset now, though. Hadn’t been since we left campus on our small adventure. A number of guys I knew seemed to prefer women who were perpetually gloomy. Those men believed in the stereotype of the brooding romantic, forgetting that it also meant you had to be with that person. I preferred happiness and took it on faith that such preference made neither me nor the object of my affection shallow or boring. I liked making Sara happy tonight, and felt a stab of jealousy—not the first time—toward Jeffrey for having that role full-time.
We listened to a couple of songs—an Elvis Costello album was playing—and then she said, “It’s my turn to make an observation.”
“Shoot,” I said.
“It’s actually a secret I feel like telling you.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because you don’t seem to have any of your own.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” Most of the time my uncomplicated life suited me well, but sometimes I envied those whose lives made secrecy necessary.
“That’s probably a good thing,” she said. “Secrets are hard to keep. Seems like they’re always getting out, one way or the other.”
“I can keep a secret,” I said.
“I know you can.” She scrunched up her nose. “I’m drunk, though. And a little high. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying stuff right now.”
“It’s up to you.”
“How about you tell me something first. A secret of your own.”
“You just said I don’t have any secrets.”
“Oh, right. Well, think of one anyway,” she said. “Or make it up.”
“I’m actually next in line for the British throne.”
“No, don’t make it up. Tell me something real.”
My heart rate quickened. I, too, was drunk and a little high. I feared my own confession.
“I’m not sure you want that,” I said.
She looked at me severely, studying me, and I was forced to look away.
“Wow,” she said.
“What?”
Her face softened. “I think you just told me everything.”
The bedroom was small and simply furnished: bed, dresser, mirror, night table. A few framed photographs of Fred’s sister and her boyfriend on what appeared to be various vacations. Hiking amid pine trees. Standing on a beach.
The bed was soft and comfortable. I could smell the smoke from Sara’s hair and a trace of scented soap or maybe shampoo. And sweat, too. She had danced hard, and I had drummed harder. Underneath the covers and with the lights off, we had stripped to our underwear. I pretended this was no big deal. We were adults, and friends, and therefore supposedly above adolescent titillation. I lay on my side, facing the window, for what seemed like a long time, and had assumed from Sara’s steady breathing that she had already fallen asleep.
“Can I spell a word on your back?” she asked.
A radiator rattled somewhere else in the apartment.
“Um, okay,” I said. Then I felt a fingernail. A straight line, down the center. Then another. Then a horizontal line. An H.
Then an I.
“Hi,” I said.
Then she wrote, “I had fun tonight.”
“So did I,” I said.
She wrote, “You are a good drummer.”
“Thanks,” I said, to the compliment as well as to her method of communication. The delicate tracing of letters felt wonderful on my back, soothing and sensual, and yet it was also putting me to sleep. I was already seeing the outlines of dreams, and then the fingernail stopped its work and her hand came to rest on the bed, just barely grazing my back, or perhaps I was only imagining this.
“We should go to sleep,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind that.”